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“No, Ada, I couldn’t possibly—”
“You must, you must! Daddy will show you. Here.”
She guided him to Mr. Edwards, who stood smiling, eager to welcome him. “I never got to dance with my own son.”
Ada fixed his limbs like a robot in need of oil. His palms were sweating in Mr. Edwards’s hands, who quickly wiped away at his chest to dry them. Took his hands again.
“I really can’t dance—”
The song started playing again. “Shh … shh …”
“You’ve got to move your left foot forward, right foot sideways—there you go.”
“You’re doing great, Bron,” said Ada.
“I don’t think I can do it—”
“Now step back,” Mr. Edwards said. “Aha! See? Well done.”
“You’re doing it!” Ada cheered.
And they twirled and twirled, and Bron even felt himself smile at one point.
“Thank you, but I think I’d rather stop.” Ada cut the music. “Okay Ada, I’ll come to your party.”
“Hurray!” She jumped into his arms, and he hugged her back. Mr. Edwards winked at him before grabbing for the tumbler of whisky on the side. “Thank you, son. I haven’t had a moment’s peace all morning.”
Bron put forward the condition that Mr. Edwards was not to partake in any costume buying on his behalf: “Please,” he said, “I’d like to pick something myself.” And then he asked a questionthat’d been on his mind all afternoon: “Is Giovanni Vespa to be invited to this party?”
“Not if Darcy can help it,” Mr. Edwards said. “But the invitations have already gone out, and he might have accidently gotten one.”
So that was that. He’d been made to agree. He would be going to the party. And now he had to confront the most daunting task of all: finding something to wear. Black skinny jeans, a long black T-shirt that flared at the ends, a bit of red at the mouth, and a cape, if he could find one. A modest vampire—that would do the trick. Would be easy and the opposite of attention-drawing. But what did a Halloween ball mean to the Edwardses? Basing his imaginings off the last party, he translated it to include pumpkins and candles floating above their heads, with fire-breathers in the courtyard and circus gymnasts trailing down ropes from the ceiling. There would be no cheap spiderweb confetti festooned along the walls, or drab skeletal figurines creeping in the corners. Anything Mr. Edwards hosted would be affluent, anything Ada suggested would be agreed to, and he would need to think beyond daywear and tomato ketchup condiments at the mouth if he was to hold his own. Not that he planned on staying long—Ada and Mr. Edwards had only stipulated that he be present. He would escape to his room and be forgotten easily enough. He surveyed his closet, wrapped a spare sheet around his chest like a bath towel and then threw it over his head.
“Boo!” he said to himself in the mirror. “I’m a ghost.” Wishing to disappear.
Halloween had never been much cause for celebration. It usually meant a day sitting in St. Mary’s and listening to Brother Mark implore that Halloween wasn’t a holiday for the religious, but for the wicked, that it was in fact a devil’s day—only to sit up later in his dorm room and listen to the boys who compared what they might have dressed up as, what sweets they would have collected.
Over the next few days, Ada went through her shortlist of costumes: a fairy, a mermaid, an astronaut, a ballerina, abumblebee, and then wrote a completely new list: a damsel in distress, a Viking, or a jack-in-the-box. Instead of conjugating verbs as per his instruction, she found some cardboard in the cupboard under the stairs and took to constructing a makeshift box from which she could pop out.
“What will you be going as?” she asked. When he couldn’t come up with anything, she went silent, threw her cardboard aside, and picked up some paper. Then she handed over her work:
Teach, taught, taught,
Think, thought, thought,
Choose, chose, chosen,
Buy, bought, bought,
Dress, dressed, dressed
(as should be at) Present:
I dress
You dress
He/she/it dresses
